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#1
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Constant Directivity Horns, "Radial" vs. Flat Front, etc.
I was going through some old (well if 1992 counts as old) brochures
last night and came across a couple of cool EV ones. One of them had a lot of details and products in it, even stadium horns and such (along with a price list, list on one of those huge stadium horns was something like $3967.00) Anyway, in this brochure, EV claimed they "invented" the constant directivity horn back in 1975. As I understand it, CD horns reduce the "beaming" of higher frequencies as they exit the horn mouth, so you get a better spread of highs into the venue. It seems that virtually every HF horn these days is a CD design, and I have noticed that along with this, most commercially available HF horns have gone to a "flat front" design, instead of the classic "radial" design. Is this just a style thing, ease of manufacture? or is it an actual requirement of the CD design? It seems like most of the CD design is at the mouth of the horn, just looking at flat front vs. radial designs it "looks" like a radial horn would have better dispersion, yet flat front horns are pretty much the norm these days. I was browsing around on the Parts Express website and noticed that they have both designs (flat front and radial), and both are designated as "CD horns"...this gives me the impression that a flat front is not a requirement of a CD design but mabye the CD designation has gotten kind of watered down over the years. I guess maybe another factor with flat front horns is it's much easier to fit on in a cabinet and/or road case? Anyway, after a number of years away from even paying attention to FOH systems, I've gotten interested in them again and this is one of those subjects I was just wondering about. Thanks, Analogeezer |
#2
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Constant Directivity Horns, "Radial" vs. Flat Front, etc.
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#3
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Constant Directivity Horns, "Radial" vs. Flat Front, etc.
I was going through some old (well if 1992 counts as old) brochures last night and came across a couple of cool EV ones. One of them had a lot of details and products in it, even stadium horns and such (along with a price list, list on one of those huge stadium horns was something like $3967.00) Anyway, in this brochure, EV claimed they "invented" the constant directivity horn back in 1975. As I understand it, CD horns reduce the "beaming" of higher frequencies as they exit the horn mouth, so you get a better spread of highs into the venue. It seems that virtually every HF horn these days is a CD design, and I have noticed that along with this, most commercially available HF horns have gone to a "flat front" design, instead of the classic "radial" design. Is this just a style thing, ease of manufacture? or is it an actual requirement of the CD design? It seems like most of the CD design is at the mouth of the horn, just looking at flat front vs. radial designs it "looks" like a radial horn would have better dispersion, yet flat front horns are pretty much the norm these days. I was browsing around on the Parts Express website and noticed that they have both designs (flat front and radial), and both are designated as "CD horns"...this gives me the impression that a flat front is not a requirement of a CD design but mabye the CD designation has gotten kind of watered down over the years. I guess maybe another factor with flat front horns is it's much easier to fit on in a cabinet and/or road case? Anyway, after a number of years away from even paying attention to FOH systems, I've gotten interested in them again and this is one of those subjects I was just wondering about. Thanks, Analogeezer A constant directivity horn "squeezes" the signal vertically in the horn throat before the horizontal flare Also the flares in the horn tend to be sharper angles than that of a radial horn which uses an exponential curve. Whether the front of the horn is flat or curved has little consequence. One company in the '70's took a radial horn and just cut of the front of the design fo a flat front. The result was a horn that looked lke a bow tie from the front. Richard H. Kuschel "I canna change the law of physics."-----Scotty |